


How They Shine

by freyjawriter24



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: M/M, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), Stars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:14:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24274153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freyjawriter24/pseuds/freyjawriter24
Summary: When Crowley Fell, the Heavens were taken from him. In more ways than one.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 66





	How They Shine

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Look at the Stars](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21445639) by [YamiSnuffles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/YamiSnuffles/pseuds/YamiSnuffles). 



> This work is (loosely) inspired by [YamiSnuffles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/YamiSnuffles/pseuds/YamiSnuffles)’s fic [Look at the Stars](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21445639), part of the [Too Much of a Good Thing](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1527806) series. It doesn’t use the same premise as that work, but if you’ve read it you’ll probably see where the idea originated. (Please do read it if you haven’t, btw. It’s so good.)

There were many fascinating things about being on Earth. Humans were a major one – their curiosity and creativity, their ability to solve problems and produce new things like the most talented of angels. They made clothing and food and shelter, they invented music and dancing and art. They remade the world they lived in every day, and it was mesmerising to watch.

Another thing to enjoy was the rest of God’s Creation; the other living things – plants and animals and other forms of life – that were scattered across the globe. For the most part they had been named by Adam in Eden, but there were more and more – seemingly every day – that made themselves known as the humans moved away from the Garden they had left. There were varieties of animals that were similar to what had come before, but different enough to require new names, and so the humans invented those too. And they lived their own intriguing lives alongside and away from the humans, and that was just as fascinating.

But one of the best things to love about being on Earth was what was _beyond_ Earth. The beauty of the sky, in all its ever-changing shapes and colours, was a work of art beyond what even the humans had yet been able to create. Sunrise and sunset were the most dynamic of times, and Aziraphale enjoyed sitting outside and watching the sun’s rays reflect and refract in the clouds, turning them orange and pink and gold. That was gorgeous, and yet those times only existed to bookend his favourite time of day: night.

The stars were the angel’s favourite thing. A huge landscape of space, glittering everywhere you looked, grouping themselves together into constellations and galaxies, lighting up the sky even without the help of the moon. The bright cloud of the Milky Way, streaking across the black, turning it deep shades of blue, red, green, gold, silver. The night was stunning, and it was all because of the stars.

Aziraphale sighed up at them. He rather wished he had someone to share this all with.

He would have asked the humans to stargaze with him, only he’d been told to watch over them from afar by Heaven. They were still to be protected as God’s most beloved creations, but for the time being he should not interact with them directly. They were still being punished for the whole forbidden fruit thing, after all.  
The only other person around to ask was the demon, Crawley. They didn’t spend much time together, what with being on opposite sides and all, but the Serpent of Eden was around often enough that they had struck up a sort of truce. Not that they were no longer enemies, and they _certainly_ weren’t friends, but they would occasionally watch the humans together and chat about topics that weren’t too dangerous. Things like their favourite foods, where they thought the humans would go next, what they thought of dancing. Things that would matter to the humans, but that Heaven (and presumably Hell) wouldn’t care about.

The problem was, Aziraphale couldn’t very well ask a demon to spend the night stargazing with him. Well, he could. He definitely could, actually. But it would have to be a very intentional question, an invitation or a request made ahead of time, in a manner that suggested forethought, rather than a casual query just as the stars were coming out, and that had _implications_ he’d rather avoid. He didn’t want the demon thinking Aziraphale was starting to _enjoy_ his company or anything. That wouldn’t be right.

But that was the choice. Admit a desire to share a special moment with a demon, or continue to enjoy the beauty of the nights alone. There was no third _casual_ or _coincidental_ option, because Crawley never stayed up to watch the stars himself.

Aziraphale sighed again. He looked to his left, where the Serpent of Eden was currently coiled up on a rock a little way away, fast asleep.

Sleeping wasn’t strictly necessary for celestials, but the humans seemed to do it all the time. Crawley had apparently picked up the habit from them, and now spent every night unconscious, missing the magic of the stars.

It was almost as if he did it on purpose. Even the humans would often stay up a little later than they should just to bask in the starlight. But as soon as the sun touched the horizon, Crawley would make his excuses and slither off, curl up somewhere out of the way, and sleep until the last of the stars had faded into the dawn.

Aziraphale frowned. It wasn’t fair that Crawley should deny himself such a vast part of Creation. [1] He may have Fallen, but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t be able to appreciate the beauty of the heavens.

The angel looked up at the slowly shifting scene above him. A billion billion diamonds, scattered across a surface of deepest blue, proving in their mere existence the strength and power of Creation. It was wonderful. It was unfathomable. It was ineffable.

Aziraphale stood. Now was as good a time as any.

“Crawley?” he whispered, crouching close to the demon. “Crawley, are you awake?”

A long, low hiss came from the shapeless mass of corporation.

“Sssomething wrong, angel?”

“No, no, nothing like that. I was just... well.” It all sounded rather silly now. _I was lonely. Thought you, a demon, might want to look at God’s Creation with me._ It wasn’t particularly angelic. “I just fancied a bit of company, was all.”

Crawley groaned, and then sat up, a shock of red hair and a pair of almost glowing yellow eyes materialising from the dark bundle that he had been a moment before.

“Alright, I’m up. What did you want to talk about?”

“Ah...” Aziraphale was at a bit of a loss. How on Earth could he phrase this so that it wouldn’t sound utterly pathetic?

He paused, fretting a little over his words, worrying that his silent stalling would make Crawley irritated, would result in him going back to sleep. But he didn’t; the demon just sat there, waiting, patient.

“I, ah, well. The humans have gone to sleep now, and I don’t tend to really have anyone to speak to at night, and I was just thinking how nice it would be to have someone to share the experience with, as it were, and, ah, well... I hoped you wouldn’t mind.”

Crawley nodded. “Yeah, angel, that’s fine.” There was an unspoken question there, a _what are you getting at?_ that the demon wasn’t voicing, but was present in his expectant tone.

Aziraphale pushed on. “I was rather hoping, in fact, that you’d, ah... watch the stars with me?”

Something pained and unreadable twisted Crawley’s face, and the demon looked away.

“I can’t.”

The angel panicked, his mind racing. _Wait, is that something expressly forbidden? Have I gone too far? Have I implied something? Does that_ mean _something I didn’t realise? Is that a specific rule Heaven – or Hell – has? What have I missed? What did I get wrong? Oh dear, I’ve said something horribly wrong and I don’t even know what and now he’s going to leave and I_ definitely _won’t have anyone to watch the stars with now and oh gosh we’ll be back to proper enemies again and I was just starting to rather enjoy this truce and oh lord oh lord oh lord –_

“W-w-what do you mean?” Aziraphale managed to stutter out.

“I mean I can’t. I physically can’t.” Crawley looked at him then, face deadly serious. “They aren’t there for me.”

“What?”

Crawley glanced upwards, winced noticeably, then stared down at the ground again. “It’s just all black to me, angel. There’s nothing there. I mean, I _know_ there’s something there, I bloody well helped make it, but it’s just... gone. Invisible, to me at least. To all demons, I think.”

“You...” Aziraphale’s mind shorted for a minute, stuck on too many thoughts and emotions. He chose something to focus on at random. “You helped make it?”

Crawley went still for a second, inhumanly still, not even the soft movement of air around them disturbing his long hair.

“Yesss,” he said eventually, the hiss drawn out and then cut off. He still hadn’t looked up, his hands clenched in his robes. “I was one of the crafters. I built nebulae, placed stars. I...”

It was Aziraphale’s turn to have patience now, to wait until the demon was ready to say what he needed to. The angel watched as Crawley’s fingers tightened and loosened on the fabric of his clothes, running the material through his hands as he must have once done with the stars themselves.

“I know exactly where it all is, angel,” the demon breathed. “I remember. I can _feel_ it. That one, there –” he pointed abruptly upwards without looking, towards a specific star that Aziraphale could see in far greater detail than the humans could. “That one was mine. My hands, built from scratch, from the very ether. And I can’t even see it. I _know_ it’s _there_ , I just can’t...”

Crawley sucked in a breath, and to his horror, Aziraphale realised the demon was about to cry.

“I, um, I’m so very sorry, Crawley. I really am.” The angel lifted a hand, wavered for a second over laying it comfortingly on the demon’s own, then brought it back again. “I’m so sorry I woke you up, too. I didn’t realise... Oh dear, I’m sorry. I’ll leave you to it now. Apologies.”

“No.”

Aziraphale had been in the motion of getting up, but he paused. He looked back at Crawley, at the glowing yellow eyes visible amongst the dark tangle of his red hair. _They look rather like stars themselves,_ he thought fleetingly. _Shining in the night._

“Please stay,” Crawley whispered.

Wordlessly, Aziraphale sat beside the demon, closer now, hopefully a vague comfort. He glanced up at the night sky laid out above them, a sparkling tapestry Crawley could not see, and felt a strange sense of both guilt and loss, as though he himself could feel what the demon was experiencing.

 _Empathy,_ came the name for that, and it was strange, a foreign feeling, one that Aziraphale would think harder on later. [2]

“Would you like me to describe it to you?”

Crawley didn’t answer for a moment. Then he nodded, slowly, uncertainly.

Aziraphale settled himself more comfortably on the ground, looked up high, and began to speak.

“It’s... dazzling, really. There’s so much of it, such a large space to take in, but you can see that much with just the blackness.” The angel swallowed, then ploughed on. “There’s a hugeness of scope to everything that makes you feel tiny, insignificant, and that’s just from the depth of the dark and the wideness of the sky. But then within that, you’ve got so much light that it practically lights up the night.”

Crawley wasn’t moving, and Aziraphale hardly dared to either. He kept his eyes fixed above, hoping the right words would come to him to make this better, not worse.

“At first glance, there’s just so much there you can’t take it in. Swathes and swathes of stars, so many that they almost look like a blanket, like they’re filling the night. But then you look, and they’re each their own individual points. And you look in between the points, and there’s more there – smaller, fainter, but still there. And then between those, too; beyond them, or perhaps just smaller than them – you’d know better than I do – there’s even more. Endless, endless stars, covering the sky.”

Aziraphale sensed motion beside him, but he kept his gaze skyward.

“They’re not all uniform, though. There’s some... they’re all different sizes anyway, like I said, and different distances, but there’s also variation in colour. Quite a lot of them a reddish, perhaps, but most appear gold or silver, little twinkling lights like tiny far-off moons or fires.”

A slight weight pressed against Aziraphale’s knee. He caught his breath in his throat, and glanced down carefully, trying not to startle the demon.

Crawley had transformed into a snake – large, though not as big as he had been at that first meeting in Eden – and he was coiled close to Aziraphale, with his head resting softly on the angel’s lap.

Aziraphale didn’t react. He let his eyes rest upwards again, though intensely aware of the demon being so close. He kept talking.

“A-And they’re not evenly distributed, either. They’re everywhere, but there’s a particular cluster of them – almost like a cloud, the stars are so thick – in a line across the sky.”

Aziraphale raised his left hand to motion, offering a sweeping gesture across his own line of sight, and then he found his fingers hovering above the ground, uncertain where to go. He could place them back where they had been, of course, but it was more enticing – more tempting, perhaps – to aim a little different.

“That’s the galaxy we’re in,” came a sibilant voice. “The Milky Way.”

Aziraphale nodded, and left room for the demon to say more. He didn’t.

The angel looked down, and found a golden eye watching him. The hovering hand was within the snake’s field of vision, and Aziraphale’s eyes flicked to it nervously. Crawley gave a slight motion of his head, the tiniest nod, and the angel carefully, oh-so gently, brought his fingers down to rest on the back of the snake’s neck.

The scales were softer than he’d imagined, and smoother, too. The demon was all muscle in this form, wholly different to his skin-and-bones human corporation, and the difference was a little dizzying. Aziraphale softly stroked a small area behind Crawley’s head, feeling his own skin slide over each tiny plate.

“What else?” the demon asked.

Aziraphale looked up above them both, searching for more to say. “I’m afraid I don’t know very much to tell you about the stars themselves. But I’ve overheard the humans stargazing before. They like to make patterns out of them. Very intelligent creatures, they are, so creative. Constellations, they call them. Pictures in the sky.”

“What are they? Do you remember any?”

“They’re based on animals, mostly. There’s a lion, like the one Adam killed. I think they chose that to memorialise it, somehow. I suppose if it’s always there above them, it’s easier to remember the story attached.”

He breathed out slowly, trying to remember the rest, trying not to focus too wholly on the sensation of the snake’s skin against his fingertips.

“There’s a bear – two, actually, there’s a couple of constellations that look practically identical to humans. And there’s a goat, a fish, a unicorn, an eagle – and... and a serpent.”

Crawley didn’t react in any outward way to this news, but Aziraphale gave him room to take it in anyway. He sat awhile in silence, still stroking the demon’s neck. It felt strange, this intimacy. _Right_ , almost, though it must certainly be wrong. But as a snake, somehow, it seemed less wrong. Angels were supposed to love all of God’s creations, after all. Was not a snake one of those? Even if he was also the Tempter of Eden?

Crawley broke the silence.

“There’s one up there,” he said quietly, “in the centre, slightly down.”

Aziraphale lifted his other hand, his right, and pointed it in roughly the direction Crawley described.

“No, a little left, I think... About there feels right. Can you see? It’s actually two.”

Aziraphale looked closer, far closer than any human eye could, and saw it.

“Oh, yes,” he breathed.

“Alpha Centauri,” the demon named it, in words not yet chosen by humanity. “Two stars, orbiting one another in perfect balance. There’s a third, too, smaller, but the main pair are the interesting ones.”

“Apart, but always together,” the angel said. He wasn’t sure why he said that.

“Yes,” the snake agreed anyway. “Exactly.”

They stayed there a while longer, Aziraphale staring at the expanse of stars above them, Crawley resting beneath a vista he could not see.

One day, humans would paint the night sky, would speckle a dark canvas with the lights demons were denied. One day, they would create cameras, and then ones sharp enough to view the stars with, in all their distant glory. [4] One day, the starcrafter would own a book of his own creations, translated to images his eyes could see.

One day, Crawley would have a different name, and would beg Aziraphale to run off to a place he could not perceive, only able to pray they would reach it safely. One day, they would both stay, and earn the right to keep their little planet under the stars.

One day, perhaps, if She was feeling particularly benevolent, the demon might wake up in a world newmade, and be able to see his precious creations once again.

But for now, the angel and the demon shared the night together, and talked about the stars.

**Author's Note:**

> 1 There was also a rather selfish part of Aziraphale that thought it wasn’t fair that he should have to spend so much time alone and lonely when there was a perfectly good celestial _right there_ who he could be enjoying this with instead. Not that Crawley was _good_. No, certainly not. [return to text]
> 
> 2 Later, he would rationalise the feeling as good, as helpful for his work as an angel – it was good to understand those you were supposed to protect, after all, and empathy should help him know how best to help them. Empathising with a demon, on the other hand, was a little more complicated to explain away. It took Aziraphale a rather long time to figure that one out, so he didn’t. _Repression_ was another concept the angel learnt in the early days, even if he didn’t allow himself to name that one. But as it became clear that the other angels appeared to look down on empathy as a concept at all, repression was the order of the day. [3]
> 
> 3 Day, month, decade, millennium. In some ways it was a way of life. [return to text]
> 
> 4 One day, the lights of humanity would begin to drown the night, but the demon would not have to witness that loss. [return to text]


End file.
